Was The Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDo’ Update Worth The Wait?

Well, after months of uncertainty, broken promises and missed deadlines, Microsoft has finally delivered the first major update to Windows Phone 7. There was of course the pre-NoDo update, which was received, or not as the case may be for many of you, but didn’t noticeably change much back in February.

So, was it worth the wait for the Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDo’ update? Most notably, of course, the first update brought with it copy & paste functionality and there isn’t really a lot to talk about with that, is there? Well there are two disappointments in this relatively simple feature, and the first isn’t hugely irritating, but is a little strange. And that is the omission of the standard ‘Cut’ feature, which is so commonly associated with copy & paste. But who am I to complain, shouldn’t I just be content with the latter for now?

Well, another irritation I’ve found already is that an item on the clipboard can only be pasted once before you have to re-highlight and copy again. It doesn’t harm the actual function, but it seems a little counter-productive.
Copy & paste wasn’t the only addition made with the update to ‘NoDo’, though. Something I have been crying out for since originally buying into Windows Phone 7 is filtered searches in the Marketplace.

Originally, a search would leave you in complete disarray, with results stemming from music, movies, applications or games, and in no particular order of relevance. That’s all changed now though, thankfully, as you now have options. Within the Marketplace, as before, you have dedicated sections for apps, games and music. Going in to each area and tapping the search button will allow you to only search that area. It makes perfect sense, and further emphasises how ridiculous the old system was. If you do want to search the whole Marketplace, you still can just by hitting search before going into a specific area. It’s a common sense system now, and thankfully it keeps it all a little more organised.

The other major promise that came from Microsoft with this update, is an decrease in the loading times of applications. With hindsight, an apt test would be to physically time the loading speeds of my apps pre-NoDo, but I didn’t. So I can’t give you any exact results, but you’ll have to take my word for it, that it worked. Many apps, many games are now much quicker in loading, though there is still no resolution to the appalling delays in refreshing the Twitter app, though this is probably more down to the third party developer than the OS itself.

All in all, a welcome and necessary first Windows Phone 7 OS update, and despite the delays, it has delivered exactly as promised. It might not be as spectacular, and the burgeoning mobile OS still has a lot of room to improve, but it’s to be expected, and I’m more than satisfied by what has been delivered with NoDo, and genuinely can’t wait for the major ‘Mango’ update that should bring multitasking among other goodies toward the end of this year…or the beginning of next. Though with the precedent set so far, we should expect the latter.

Have you updated your Windows Phone 7 handset to the ‘NoDo’ update? What do you think to it? Has it improved your experience of using your mobile phone?